A deck I co-designed with Yutaka won at the local The Spoils TCG Spring Constructed Championship. Bare in mind, since the The Spoils TCG scene is so small here, it basically amounts to Yutaka and me going head to head against our own Bizarro counterparts. So the match up basically amounts to two experienced tournament level players with large collections against two casual players with limited collections. I nearly won, but made a few tactical missteps like enabling my competitor’s only tactic! But this post isn’t about me; it’s about the deck A Clockwork Thabbashite.

Building the Deck of THE FUTURE!

A Clockwork Thabbashite began with me essentially ending my work on Thabbashite Hustle. I eventually got the Witty Worm and Inadequate Wand cards I needed to provide more bounce to the deck. My original strategy was to use Mesmerizing Enchantress to lock up combat, while I drew tactics for debuffing and minor discarding. During our sessions playing the game, it dawned on Yutaka that Arcanist cards perfectly complement Gearsmith cards.

Around last weekend, he came over to basically co-opt the revised Arcanist portion of Thabbashite Hustle, replacing my Rogue cards with the best Gearsmith cards in his collection. Since I was deck-less at the time, I designed a Banker/Warlord deck called Apocalypse Mau. Some of the Gearsmith cards he added included bread-and-butter cards like All-Nighter, Toolbox Elf, and Luteoderm Prototype. He also added the all-important Arcanist tactic Voidal Replication without which he wouldn’t get proper cycling from his discard pile. I actually need to get a few copies of this card for my own mono-Arcanist deck.

During the course of play-testing, we discovered two things. The first thing is that Rewarding Salvage does not allow you pull any two cards from your discard pile. The second thing is that Redonkulous is an awesome Arcanist tactic! It penalizes your opponent for having a hand, and then penalizes your opponent for having characters on the board. If you opponent’s hand is big, play it from Flip Up to shave those cards from his hand. When he meets the minimum, remove one of his core characters from the game. He loses either way. Needless to say, it got our competition a bit worried about that “Purple Haze variant over there.”

Instant Win Just Add Voidal Replication

He had every right to be worried because A Clockwork Thabbashite played by Yutakabareru won the tournament!

After the tournament, it was revealed to us that items attached to characters follow the characters to whatever destination they go to on the board. So, if a Toolbox Elf with Luteoderm Prototype is returned to one’s hand by way of Inadequate Wand, the Luteoderm Prototype allows the player to pull any card from his deck into his hand as it is no longer “in play.” This when stacked with the Inadequate Wand’s ability to search for tactics allows you to pull two cards- a tactic and a non-tactic from your deck. The moral of this story: in the next version of A Clockwork Thabbashite expect to see Inadequate Wand back on the deck list!

Remember kids- don’t leave home without a Luteoderm Prototype and an Inadequate Wand!

Editor’s Note: This is post is available at my Gloamspike’s Casino blog on Team Covenant.